Re: Idioms.

Dylan Sung wrote:


"Mike Wright" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:12iiafth5mv1987@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lee Sau Dan wrote:

"Mike" == Mike Wright <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:




Mike> What I was thinking of was, for example, that there is one
Mike> term for "father's elder brother" and another for "father's
Mike> younger brother", but only one term for "mothers brother",
Mike> without regard to age ranking. The same goes for their
Mike> sisters.

Cantonese does have different terms for mother's younger vs. elder
sisters. But it doesn't distinguish between mother's younger
vs. elder brothers.


In Hakka,

大姑 aunt, father's older sister
大舅 uncle, mother's older brother
大姨 aunt, mother's older sister

阿姑仔 aunt, father's younger sister *
阿舅仔 uncle, mother's younger brother *
阿姨仔 aunt, mother's younger sister *

* with or without the pre- and post-fixes as these additional syllables are often used in situations of familiarity.

阿娘 /a33 NjiON11/ aunt, father's older brother's wife
叔姆 /suk3 mE33/ aunt, father's younger brother's wife
叔嬸 /suk3 sim33/ ditto [1]
叔娘 /suk2 NjiON55/ ditto [2]

[1] and [2] are regional variations. For father's younger brother's wife, I generally use 叔姆 whilst the wife in her different dialect of Hakka uses the latter both [1] and [2]. I

阿姆仔 [a33 mE33 tsai31] is another possibility, and used to show a certain degree of familiarity, for instance if two women are friends and whose husbands are not necessarily related, but considered to be of the same generational rank, but this term is used for the younger of the two women. The children of the older women may even follow this term of address towards the younger 'aunt' as well.

The use of kinship terms to address non-relatives (of similar relative
rank) is very wide spread among Chinese dialects. I am surprised that
you mention only this. For examples, don't you call friends of your
father 叔 and 伯 as well?

In anycase, I've been told by my dad once that we should learn the list of generation names as you can occasionally meet someone who you've never met before of the same surname, and they may ask what it is, your /su55 pui53/ 字輩, or /pui55 su53/ 輩字. They can then work out immediately the appropriate rank to address each other. Even though a person is younger, his generation name may be higher, therefore you could address the younger person as an 'uncle' 叔. This is often done in formal occasions like traditional wedding feasts where arriving guests are introduced to the bride and groom who must welcome the arrivals by the proper rank as a form of respect to them.

The practice of "generational name" is dying rather rapidly, I am
afraid. In my family, my father decided not to follow the tradition.
In fact, I have a one character given name. My sisters have two
character given names but there is no common character between them.

Tak
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Tak To takto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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